Dunes, Drinks, and D’New Year: the Desert

Peru Post 2/3!  Finally found more internets.

After Lima it was a short hop south to Ica, an agricultural town responsible for producing much of Peru’s pisco.  At the edge of the Atacama Desert, Ica is dry, relying on an aquifer for water needs.  Because it’s in a desert, there’s lots of sand.

Like many other cities we’ve passed though, we only planned on staying in Ica for one day but ended up staying a few.  It was cheap, we didn’t have to carry around rain jackets, and there was good food — why not?

The desert was, as you might have expected, hot.  We spent most of the days indoors shopping, eating, and performing blind taste tests, daring to venture outside only in the evenings.

New vest. Got the “urban camo” color.

Huacachina, South America’s sole desert oasis, is located a mere 10 minutes from Ica.  We had read and heard about the dunebuggying and sandboarding that took place there ever since we got into Peru, so we took a day to check it out.

While the oasis itself wasn’t quite what you’d expect (there were paddleboats on the water and buildings everywhere… this was not where they filmed the guy-crawling-over-the-dune-ridge-to-find-his-salvation in the movies), the dunebuggying and sandboarding were pretty top-notch.  We rented some old snowboards and boots, threw them in the back of some buggies, buckled up, and were on our way.

The buggies were hot-rods.  Certifiably insane beasts with just as much bark as bite.  It was like being on a roller-coaster, only with fewer safety regulations and baby rocks flying into your face.  Oh, and you ended up half-deaf too.

The general idea was to buggy, sandboard, repeat.  We’d putz around (read: rip across) the dunes for a while, stop at a precipice, wax our boards, and ride down, trying not to catch a mouthful of sand in the process.

Inevitably, though, you did catch a mouthful of sand.  In case you forgot, we were in a desert, where it gets really hot and you sweat.  And when you’re sweating and you eat it on a dune, the dune gets everywhere.  We were finding sand in places we’d rather not say for longer than we’d like to admit.

We took the last tour of the day, which meant we got to end our tour watching the sandy sunset.

Because the region is known for its pisco and wine, we decided to go tasting the next morning.  Foolishly not bothering with breakfast, we took a cab north of town to the vineyards of El Catador.

Waiting outside before they even opened for the day, we must have looked like some true alcoholics.

We were given a tour by Jorge, one of the head honchos of the whole operation.  From vineyards to press to fermentation containers to still, Jorge showed and explained all.

While he explained all, I can’t say we understood all.  He seemed really proud of his English, so we didn’t have the heart to ask him to repeat things.  Don’t take my word for it, but I’m pretty sure these are Quebranta grapes, the strongest of the pisco grape varietals.  They’re used to make pisco puro, the “purest” pisco with the highest alcohol content.

Here’s the traditional press they still use today.  The screw was apparently carved from a single piece of wood and is over a hundred years old.

Peruvian Pinot Noir is not the dry red you’re accustomed to; it’s actually sweet — they have a different name for what the rest of the world calls a Pinot (don’t ask me why).  Anyway, here’s Jorge’s dog Pinot, so named because “he so sweet”.

For something like 15 days, the crushed grapes are fermented in these fermentation containers…

…then the contents are distilled!

Of the material that goes in, only about a quarter comes out the tap end as drinkable pisco.

After our tour, we went to the tasting room to sample an assortment of wines, piscos, and pisco cream liqueurs.

We ended up buying a few souvenirs and bottles of wine and pisco, not fully understanding at the time what that actually meant as backpackers carrying all our belongings for the next months.  Should have had breakfast.

Thankfully we were staying at a swanky resort that night, so we were able to eat a big lunch, return to town, and nap the day away in our comfy bed.  The evening brought a nice swim, some fantastic pizza, and a cream liqueur nightcap.  The perfect end to a great day…

…or so I thought.  I awoke the next morning to the acrid smell of burnt plastic.

Turns out the cable jack fused to the phone socket.  Don’t know how it happened or why, but phone bricked.  At least I still had my other one!

It was time to be on our way south, so we left the resort and headed to the bus station.  On the way, I saw my first Chevy Silverado of the trip… a same-year, same-color nostalgic reminder to a time when I didn’t have to take public transportation to get places.

The trip to Nazca was uneventful.  We got in right before sundown and took a stroll through the bustling markets, where vendors were selling countless fireworks and yellow underwear for the New Year.

We found our way to the main plaza, where there were nice fountains, rowdy crowds, and even a Nazca line!

A Nazca line! (Technically true…it was a line in Nazca)

We had a late dinner at the local crepe joint before grabbing some NYE party supplies and heading to our private rooftop terrace.

Party!!!

Because fireworks are either legal or the police just don’t care, Nazca was a place to see as the clock struck midnight.  We were in the middle of the city on top of the tallest building around, so we got a full 360-degree view of a professional-grade show.

New Year’s Day meant an overnight bus ride to Cusco — but not before some lomo saltado, a Peruvian favorite, and some more exploring.

We decided to take a tour of some of the sights surrounding Nazca.  Our first stop was the Cantalloc Aqueducts, an underground system of waterways built by the people of Nazca some two thousand years prior.  The aqueducts bring glacial melt all the way from the Andes — pretty impressive, given that they’re like 60 miles away.

The aqueducts have access points for cleaning, repairing, and water access.  Apparently they’re also important in maintaining a uniform flow-rate.

Since the water is transported underground until these ports near the city, the water is relatively uncontaminated and is safe to drink.  (We tried and didn’t get sick.)

Some ports spiral clockwise, others counterclockwise… there are a few concentric ones, too.  As far as I know, nobody really knows why they were built like that.

After the aqueducts, we went to go see a Nazca line in an area known as The Needles.  It was right next to an ancient thieves’ graveyard, where we saw a (what I presume to be human) femur sticking out of the ground.

The line was essentially a huge triangle pointing to something purportedly important in the mountains.  From the ground level it looked like some stones a few kids had lined up out of boredom, but the calculated nature of the form became much more apparent after hiking up a nearby hill.

Satisfied at seeing one of the Nazca Lines, we went for a short ride to the Paredones Inca ruins.  Built when the Inca expanded their empire to the Nazca region, the ruins are currently in the process of being restored.

Our last part of the tour involved going to see how traditional earthenware was made by the pre-Inca Nazca.

After a short demonstration and explanation about the various clays, pigments, and firing processes, we were allowed to make our own creations.  Kate went with a snapping turtle. (?)

Some of the [professionally made] pieces were quite ornately decorated.

After that it was back to the city center where we ate, admired the eyes of the kitty below, and twiddled our thumbs waiting for a bus that showed up two hours late.

Exhausted, we finally boarded the bus around 2am.  We had heard that this was going to be a pretty awful ride, but we had heard that before…

It turned out to be a pretty awful ride.  While the bus was of the highest echelon of coach transport — complete with personal entertainment centers and fluffy blankets — we didn’t really get to enjoy it that much, as most of the ride was spent carsick on the brink of barfing.  Thankfully we had headphones, saltines, and jackets smelling heavily of detergent: the ideal combination which kept us from upchucking ourselves when the bile behind us started flying.

About two hours out of Cusco we ran into some road construction.  Because our driver was nice and we had to wait for quite a while, he let us off the bus to catch a breath of fresh air.

Tired and eager to rid the rancid stench from our nostrils, we dropped our bags off at our beyond-awful hostel (see next post) and headed to Kate’s favorite place on earth.

Because Spanish-speakers have an incredibly hard time pronouncing my name, it was on that day I decided to revert to the one I used in Spanish class all those years.  I have not gone by “Jared” to any non-English speakers since.

Peru Post 3/3 shall cover the rest of Peru: Cusco, the trek to Machu Picchu, and the western half of Lake Titicaca 🙂  Sorry to keep you all waiting for so long, but please be patient with this Bolivian internet!

Love,

Kate & Jared